Sunday, 13 January 2013

Beware of sheep. They seem innocent enough to me in this field near
Chatto. This old RAC sign is by the minor road from Hownam. An identical
sign is by the road to Sourhope, southwest of Attonburn:photo by Walter Baxter, 13 May 2009

Lambing had all the thrill and interest of
calving without the hard labor. It was usually uncomfortable in that it
was performed in the open; either in drafty pens improvised from straw
bales and gates or more often out in the fields. It didn’t seem to occur
to the farmers that the ewe might prefer to produce her family in a
warm place or that the vet may not enjoy kneeling for an hour in his
shirtsleeves in the rain.

And the lambs. All young animals are
appealing but the lamb has been given an unfair share of charm. The
moments come back; of a bitterly cold evening when I had delivered twins
on a wind-scoured hillside; the lambs shaking their heads convulsively
and within minutes one of them struggling upright and making its way,
unsteady, knock-kneed, toward the udder while the other followed
resolutely on its knees.

The shepherd, his purple, weather-roughened
face almost hidden by the heavy coat which muffled him to his ears, gave
a slow chuckle. “How the ‘ell do they know?”

He had seen it happen thousands of times and
he still wondered. So do I. And another memory of two hundred lambs in a
barn on a warm afternoon. We were inoculating them and there was no
conversation because of the high-pitched protests of the lambs and the
unremitting deep baaing from nearly a hundred ewes milling anxiously
around outside. I couldn’t conceive how these ewes could ever get their
own families sorted out from that mass of almost identical little
creatures. It would take hours.

It took about twenty-five seconds. When we
had finished, we opened the barn doors and the outpouring lambs were met
by a concerted rush of distraught mothers. At first the noise was
deafening but it died away rapidly to an occasional bleat as the last
stray was rounded up. Then neatly paired off, the flock headed calmly
for the field.

A new arrival at Henderland. A new born lamb gets a look of approval from mum in a field at Henderland Farm: photo by Walter Baxter, 13 April 2009

Sheep at Chester Knowe near Gattonside. Sheep normally run away when
approached, but this lot came rushing up expecting to be fed and stayed
around for a while: photo by Walter Baxter, 17 September 2006

A horseshoe of sheep. To the northwest of Redheugh Farm where the
farmer has made a feed delivery in this field by the east coast: photo by Walter Baxter, 19 March 2010

Chatto Craig. This small hill with rocky outcrops was the site of an
Iron Age hillfort. The eastern face of the hill drops steeply to the
Kale Water: photo by Walter Baxter, 24 May 2009

A view from Cunzierton Hill. Mixed farmland with Townfoot Plantation
beyond the arable field on the right. Rubers Law is on the skyline
centre left: photo by Walter Baxter, 24 May 2009

Corsbie Tower from Knock Hill: photo by Walter Baxter, 2 August 2009

Corsbie Tower:photo by Walter Baxter, 30 July 2009

A rough grazing field at Abbey Knowe. On the west side of the B6357: photo by Walter Baxter, 29 March 2009

Border Farmland. Sheep in pasture with the Eildon Hills on the skyline and Curling Farm in the distance centre right: photo by Walter Baxter, 23 May 2007

Sheep at Threstle Bog. Hill farming area in the Western Cheviots with Hownam Law prominent in the background to the left: photo by Walter Baxter, 24 May 2009

12 comments:

Keeping in mind of course that though James Herriot grew up in Glasgow, his veterinary practise was in Yorkshire.

Sheep aplenty there too.

From the February 1995 NY Times obit:

"Mr. Herriot was hospitalized last year after being attacked by a flock of sheep. In what might have been a scene from one of his books, he was apparently trying to stop the sheep from eating plants on his lawn when they butted and trampled him, breaking his leg."

(By the by, these photos are but a few of the nearly 13,000 contributed by Walter Baxter -- "WattieB" as he is familiarly called on his author page -- to the building of Geograph's mostly quite green and pleasant virtual land.)

Strangely the borderline between England and Scotland marks more or less where two separate land masses came together before man ever came on the scene Till that time it seems Scotland (like it's people since?) migrated all over the place and was attached to North America for a while??!

http://skyelander.orgfree.com/scot1.html

The divide between these two adjoining countries however seems to persist, at least culturally and socially, to the present day

Certain geographical demarcations do make sense, notwithstanding the pressure of global corporate marketing strategies that would have all peoples be the same, so that they might all buy the one product, thus increasing the golden rule of the profit margin & c.

I never knew lambs would attack. They always seemed so docile. We used to have to pull them out from under the house in Maine--they would get scared in a storm but they didn't seem smart enough to be able to turn around and come out when the sun came out.